ZX Spectrum: lets talk about some actual RETRO gaming.
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I was given a 48k Speccy with quite a few games, so I couldn't say which was the actual first one I played. The ones I have the clearest recollection of playing very early on are 3D Ant Attack and Kokotoni Wilf on the Soft Aid compilation. Although looking at the list of games on that tape, Spellbound was probably the first I played, as I'm pretty sure I loaded that tape first and it's the first game on it.

I did play a few games when I was very small on the BBC my mum had before my parents lost almost everything in the early 80s recession, but I barely remember those and care even less: the Speccy was my first proper gaming home.

meme wrote:
My first game was either Gift From The Gods (which was fucking shit in hindsight) or the demo of Army Moves (which was also fucking shit and ridiculously hard). After those two I moved onto Konami Hypersports and worked up wrist muscles that could fell trees.

spat tea out laughing at this

First game I think was Espionage Island and, let's be fair, was fucking impossible to live more than a minute

you start in a plane that's about to crash. If you don't get the first command right, you're dead. Along with the 2nd and 3rd command too.

After an hour of crashing a plane 502 times, you finally get to the ground

I think the first game I played ever was Monty On The Run on the Speccy. That or a demo of Bubble Bobble. I remember my dad telling me I wasn't old enough to use it before relenting at a later date and letting me play Monty.

It was all downhill from there. I don't think my interest in video games has ever waned.

Chuckie Egg 2 would have been one of my first games. Took me years, until playing it recently on emulator, to figure out that the sign post on the first screen poked through the ground, and that's what the triangle of death on the screen below was.

Also, it really nailed a feeling of dread, or apprehension in the opening screens with it's flat use of colour, big screens and small main sprite. Loved it.

I was given my Gran's ZX Speccy 48K as she upgraded to a 128K +2 to play Scrabble., having eagerly gobbled up Horace Goes Skiing, and before I started reading Speccy Mags, I promptly spent 3 quid of my hard-saved pocket money on SAS Operation Thunderflash.

Yay for Speccies. The first game I clearly remember going into town with my dad to buy was Hungry Horace. Sitting in the back of the car looking at the box and getting all giddy and excited, couldn't wait to play it.

It was a pretty rubbish Pac Man clone, but still great.

Also I had a big row with my dad in a shop because he wanted to buy Match Day but I wasn't interested in football back then so I wanted something else and threw a strop. (That one might have been for the BBC Model B, thinking about it)

Does everyone realise that there are still new Spectrum games coming out, btw? There have been some frankly awesome titles in the last few years. This search, for instance, will get you all the games released since 2005 that have scored more than 7/10 on the WOS database.

Blerk wrote:
Does everyone realise that there are still new Spectrum games coming out, btw? There have been some frankly awesome titles in the last few years. This search, for instance, will get you all the games released since 2005 that have scored more than 7/10 on the WOS database.

They're quite prolific and very, very capable with the hardware. Most of their releases this year have been a bit samey though, they're all done as examples of what can be done with a new platforming engine that they're trying to get done and released.